In June, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in King v. Burwell, ruling 6-3 that those who purchased health insurance through the federally run Healthcare.gov marketplace were entitled to tax-credit subsidies despite the fact that the law says credits are only to be distributed for marketplaces "established by the state."

"Today's 6-3 decision in King v. Burwell was very disappointing but not unexpected," according to Sally Pipes, president of the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) in San Francisco. "Justices Roberts and Kennedy were afraid to upset the Obamacare applecart. As Justice Scalia said, 'the court has changed the usual rules of statutory interpretation for the sake of the ACA.'"

"The law is still flawed," Pipes continued. "The American people will face higher premiums, higher deductibles, and limited networks of doctors and hospitals in the future. The GOP must now develop a strategy going forward. Republican members of Congress have to decide whether they are going to develop and support a single replacement plan that will bring about affordable, accessible, quality care by empowering doctors and patients or are they going to lie down and say the law is in place and live with it ....

"The 2016 Republican candidates will have to develop a plan as to how they will deal with SCOTUScare, as Justice Scalia called it in his dissenting opinion," she concluded. "There is no doubt that Obamacare will be a major issue in the 2016 election campaign."